In architecture the Romans made great use of curves and of arches, which they learned to construct from the Etruscans, and they em ployed these forms in the most ingenious ways such as in the long line of aqueducts, the bold bridges, the triumphal arches, the super-impos ing of several tiers of arcades, in which people pretend to trace the Hellenic influence, even to the cupolas, among which the vault of the Pantheon, reconstructed by Hadrian, is con spicuons for its amplitude and solidity.
Toward the end of the republic and at the beginning of the empire, there were introduced into Roman architecture, together with diverse materials, different artistic forms.
Bricks of solid clay, well shaped and of regu lar form, small dice of tufa, or simple chips and splinters of flint pebbles, were collected into a solid mortar with chalk and pazaolana (a fer ruginous stone from the volcanoes of Latium or Campania). The solidity of this material allowed of new constructions, especially the crossed arches and ample arcades. As regards architectural ornamentation, the Romans, be sides the Tuscan, and the three Greek styles (with preference for the Corinthian), made use of a new style of architecture, the Composite, which was the outcome of the blending of the Ionic with the Corinthian.
In plastic art, the Romans soon became the servants of the Greeks, whose admirable works obscured the rude local sculpture. Only in portraits did the former maintain, until the time of the decadence, the value of nature. Sculpture at the time of Augustus tried to imi tate the best models of Attic art; the most per fect of the monuments built in the Golden Age of Rome was the Ara Pacis, the culminating 'symbol of Roman civilization. And into his torical reliefs, inspired, it may be, by Hellenic models, they knew how to put fresh life, as is shown in the reliefs on the triumphal arches of Claudius, Titus, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius and in the admirable sculptured recital of the Dacian wars, which surround the column of Trajan like a scitala, copied afterward in the Column of Marcus Aurelius. The Roman con suls, in their war booty, and the pro-consuls and the administrators of the provinces, enriched the country with true works of original art, de spoiling Greece and the Orient. What they could not steal'was copied and the copies were made with the fidelity of perfected mechanical methods. The passion for collecting art works prevailed among private persons, and Greek artists came to Italy to establish their studios, attracted by this mania of the rich Romans.
The artists of the family of Polykles were called by Metellus; Apollodorus, Apollonius, Glycon, Cleomenes, Antiochus are names of artists that may be read on famous statues in the Italian museums, such as the Torso of Belvedere, the Farnese Hercules. Avianus Evander was a celebrated sculptor in the service of Antonius, etc.
Pasiteles was the founder of a school which flourished in the latter days of the Roman republic and the first of the empire; a school without originality, and which, following the archaistic fashion of the times, copied and adapted earlier models and composed untruth ful work. Among the products of this school are the "Orestes and Electra* of Menelaus, in the Ludovisi Gallery, the "Orestes and Pylades' in the Louvre and other "Orestes and Electra" at Naples.
Nero, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Heliogaba lus, Alexander Severus, were true and real artists; Hadrian left us a work of architecture, the temple of Venus in Rome, while the Greek, Apollodorus, architect and sculptor, created the admirable works which commemorate the glories of Trajan.
To the architects and sculptors of Imperial Rome, the decoration of the rich tombs, which extended for many miles beyond the gates of the city, was .a fruitful field. All the most varied forms of mausoleums found a place there, from the modest sepulchral to the altar tomb, and from the sarcophagus to the colossal tumulus richly ornamented, as for example the archaic tomb near Albano, still of Etruscan type, and the sepulchre of Cecilia Metella on the Appian Way, of the latter days of the republic.
The Italian form of the tumulus, erected on a circular base, still prevailed; but the treat ment was Hellenized. The Imperial tombs of Augustus and Hadrian still preserve that form as a foundation, while in the architectural adornment they are inspired by Hellenic monu ments, such as the mausoleum of Arsine in Samothrace. But there are not lacking im ported, or purely Hellenic formi; shafts, adiculat, little temples, or perhaps exotics like the Egyptian pyramid of Caius Cestius, or the turreted tombs with steps, as if several buld ings were placed one on the other; as, for in stance, that of the Julians at S. Remy and that of the Secundini at Trives.